rberus as the disciples of Plato encountered at the
entrance of the groves of the Academy,--

"[Greek: Oudeis ageometraetos eisito],"

"Let no one ignorant of Geometry enter here";

but the divine Aphrodite welcomed all mankind to the tender teachings of
the Wild Acanthus, the Honeysuckle, and the Sea-Shell, and all the deep
utterances of boundless Beauty.

Truly, it is sad and dispiriting to the artist to find that all modern
aesthetical writings limit and straiten the free walks of highest
Art with strict laws deduced from rigid science, with mathematical
proportions and the formal restrictions of fixed lines and curves,
nicely adapted from the frigidities of Euclid. The line A B must equal
the line C D; somewhere in space must be found the centre or the focus
of every curve; and every angle must subtend a certain arc, to be easily
found on reference to the tables of the text-books. "The melancholy
days have come" for Art, when the meditative student finds his early
footsteps loud among these dry, withered, and sapless leaves, instead of
brushing away the dews by the fountains of perpetual youth. I am aware
of no extant English work on Greek Lines which does not aim to reduce
that magnificent old Hellenic poetry to the cold, hard limitations of
Geometry. Modern Pharisees nail that antique Ideal of loveliness and
purity to a mathematical cross.

Now it is capable of distinct proof, that abstract Lines of Beauty, even
in a greater degree than any other expressions of Art, are born and
baptized in Love. Because parabolic curves frequently _coincide_ with
these lines, it is no proof that they _created_ them.

The Water-Lily, or Lotus, perpetually occurs in Oriental mythology as
the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power in Nature,--the
emblem of that great life-giving principle which the Hindu and the
Egyptian and all early nations instinctively elevated to the highest and
most cherished place in their Pantheons. Payne Knight, quoted in Mr.
Squier's work on the "Antiquities of America," ingeniously attributes
the adoption of this symbol to the fact, that the Lotus, instead
of rejecting its seeds from the vessels where they are germinated,
nourishes them in its bosom till they have become perfect plants, when,
arrayed in all the irresistible panoply of grace and beauty, they spring
forth, Minerva-like, float down the current, and take root wherever
deposited. And so it was used by nearly all the earl